The latest Humble Bundle may offer the best series of games yet, including …

The Humble Bundles are now something of an institution. Indie games are bundled up, released on a cross-platform basis, and sold for whatever price you're willing to pay. None of the games are shackled by DRM, the customer support usually comes from the developers themselves, and the response from gamers has been amazing: the latest bundle has been up for around a day and has already taken in over $1 million, with over 190,000 bundles sold. That's not surprising, as the games included in the Humble Bundle 4 are universally amazing, including Super Meat Boy, Jamestown, and Shank, among others.

We talked to Richard Esguerra, whose job title is listed as "Bundle Advocate," to talk about how this latest bundle was put together, and how the ideas behind the Humble Bundles are growing.

Esguerra was happy when I told him how amazing this lineup of games looked, and he explained that the team has been working on putting this bundle together for half a year. "We're pretty active in contacting game developers, but the conversation is usually pretty mutual," he said. "Jamie from Klei Entertainment caught us after last year's GDC talk, and that is how Shank's epic journey onto Mac and Linux—and ultimately into HIB 4—began. On the other hand, we have been pestering Edmund about Super Meat Boy via AIM since before it was even released."

One of the most exciting aspects of the bundles is that they mark the first time many of the games have been ported to platforms other than Windows, with each title offering full support for play on a Mac or on Linux. "The most ambitious aspect of a Humble Bundle is definitely the cross-platform porting," Esguerra agreed. "Some developers are ready for it from day one, but usually a game is Windows-only and needs to get ported to Mac and Linux. Ryan Gordon and Edward Rudd have been instrumental in this, but a lot of developers will do ports internally as well."

The Humble Bundles have done more for gaming on the Mac and Linux than maybe any other single thing in the past few years, as the team can go to developers who may be leery of cross-platform work and both provide talent to help with the porting and point to a proven business model so the developers understand that porting their game is a winning strategy. Many of the games can also now be activated via Steam, adding another layer of value for gamers.

Humble Bundle 4

There is always the question of how many bundles the market can support, and the Humble team has experimented with developer-specific bundles. "The Humble Frozenbyte and Introversion Bundles were anchored around a particular developer's catalog. The Humble Voxatron Debut featured a brand-new game that hadn't been available to the public before," Esguerra explained. "All year, we grappled with an age-old bundle question: is it better to release bundles more frequently, or is it better to release a few monumental bundles every so often?" They've been trying to do both, and so far the strategy has proven to be a success.

The team is thinking about what dream games they'd like to see in future bundles, they're looking for software engineers to hire so they can grow, and there is talk of the "Humble Store," a series of tools provided to independent developers in order to make it easier to sell games through their websites. There are also some projects that everyone would keep secret... for now. The core values of the Humble Bundles will never change, however.

"The goal is always to make a promotion that gets gamers excited, while supporting charities and giving indie developers their due," Esguerra said.